


The Newcomer

by Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Complete, During Canon, Fade to Black, M/M, Make Out Session, Mandalorian, One Shot, Partners to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21683920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome/pseuds/Pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome
Summary: The Mandalorian has a run-in with someone else who wears the armor.
Relationships: boba fett/the mandalorian
Comments: 19
Kudos: 437





	The Newcomer

The Mandalorian realizes, about halfway through the job, that the governor of this colony had assumed he was hiring someone _else._ Someone who might wear similar armor and be roughly the same size and have the same number of limbs and the same profession, but clearly, someone else. Someone qualified to take down the threat that turned out to be far more work than the Mandalorian had expected. Someone just a little more _notorious_ and a little less of a… rookie.

There. He’d admit it, if only to himself. This job was still new to him. He’s gotten better, he’s pretty sure, since he first started, and there’s plenty of practice now, what with the Rebellion finally taking action and scaring the Imps into spending their credits on bounties.

But he’s still _new_ to this work, at least a little bit.

Because that’s his only excuse, right now, for how he could let himself be completely surrounded by thuggish bounty hunters, each one well-armed and dangerous. Each one hunting after the prize laying dead at his feet.

At least, the Mandalorian thinks to himself, he’d managed to do that part of the job successfully.

(He’s not new to that part of this job, but that’s a different story.)

“Huh,” one of the Bothans says, keeping their blaster trained on the Mandalorian. “I always figured you’d be a little more… impressive looking.”

“Yeah,” another hunter says. “Doesn’t even look like he’s wearing all real armor.”

“Good,” the green-hair humanoid snarls, hefting his sawed off blaster rifle. “Easier to bring him down.”

The Mandalorian pivots, eyes tracking every movement from the others, his helmet cam giving him a greater degree of view. But there’s no way he’s getting out of here unscathed. There’s too many of them.

There’s not enough of him.

“So long, legend.” The bothan’s tone is mocking and cold. The Mandalorian watches as the thug’s finger starts to press down the trigger. “All hail the great Boba—“

The sentence is cut off by the sound of the Bothan being disintegrated into a thousand particles, followed by the screams of the other thugs as they realized that they were suddenly in very deep bantha poodo.

Meanwhile, the Mandalorian’s heart has jumped into a much higher gear, thudding hard against his chest.

He hadn’t even heard the other man enter the small, dark room. None of his sensors had gone off. None of his own _senses_ had even picked up on it.

“There’s…” the green-haired human starts to say. “two—“

This time, it’s the Mandalorian who cuts off the speaker, lifting his pistol and firing a clean shot. A second later, the next thug falls from matching blaster fire.

The Mandalorian still doesn’t turn around. Instead, he works efficiently to clear the room of threats. Each shot measured, practiced, clean.

Each moment wondering if he’s going to be rewarded with a blaster bolt to his back.

Finally, the blaster fire volleys silence.

Only then, as the numbers of thugs dwindled, does he turn to see the newcomer: another man in familiar armor, another face hidden behind a T-shaped visor.

The newcomer looks directly at theMandalorian as he reloads his blaster, saying, “You have _got_ to stop taking jobs with my name on them, _ruus.”_

The dry drawl makes the Mandalorian smile, just for a moment, before he spun to smash his elbow into the last of the thugs’ neck. The alien goes down, hard. The Mandalorian steps forward, ready to finish the job…

But the hiss of a whipcord stops him. It zips past him, wrapping around the Bothan’s legs. The newcomer stalks forward.

The Mandalorian raises his gloved hands, allowing the newcomer to finish tying up the thug. How could anyone mistake one for the other? He wonders. He’s nowhere near as professional, as deadly, as this man.

Even if he is a little taller.

“This one,” the newcomer says, finishing with an injection dart to knock the alien out, “has a 20,000 bounty.”

The Mandalorian protests, “But there’s no--”

“You need to stop relying on those devices.”

“But the guild--”

“And,” the newcomer spins, pointing a finger at the Mandalorian. “Relying on them.”

The Mandalorian falls silent, knowing better than to try to argue with the man in front of him. Instead, he watches as the expert bounty hunter sweeps the area, tags and bags their marks, and then, turns once more to face the Mandalorian. “Listen to me,” he says. “There's no one in this whole shithole of a galaxy that’s got your back. You need to remember that.”

“Dush’ja.” The Mandalorian says the word with contempt, his face heating under the helmet.

_Liar._

The newcomer folds his arms across his chest, making the Mandalorian see, as he had so many times before, not just the scars across the armor, nor the braids hanging off one shoulder, marks of bounty for the most dangerous of prey, but the sigil over his heart, the mark showing that this is no foundling, no lost Mando without a home planet, no imposter or pretender to a legacy few understood.

This is Boba Fett himself.

“What did you say?”

‘You heard me.”

There is one long, infinitely stressful moment. “My ship. Now.”

\--

Fett only stops long enough to deposit the merchandise before he approaches the Mandalorian. He’s silent, moving far more quietly in those boots than the Mandalorian has ever been able to. Maybe he’s not worthy of the armor (what little of it he has), the reputation, or even, the name.

Maybe he’s not worth anything, to anyone, least of all, to Fett.

Now, they’re millimeters apart. If they had no helmets, he’d be able to feel Fett’s breath on his skin.

As if reading his mind, Boba commands, “helmet. Off.”

The Mandalorian finds that his own hands are unsteady as he reaches up for the locks but he regains his courage in one wild, brilliant moment. “You first,” he says.

Fett doesn’t move.

The Mandalorian frees his wrists, then, and brings his hands up to Fett’s neck. When he reaches, he can feel the pulse thudding hard, the sole proof this man before him is flesh and blood and not a being of pure besakar.

“Do it,” Fett says, daring him.

He takes the bait. His thumbs find the latch and now he’s the one tearing a helmet off, letting it fall from his still trembling fingers. He realizes now that he’s closed his eyes as he’s done so, as if to see him is to betray something deep and true.

But when he feels the warm pressure, not of a gloved hand, but of Boba’s own palm, cup his chee, tilting his head toward Boba’s, then, he knows there is nothing profane about this moment at all.

No, this is the sort of moment that makes life worth living.

With eyes open, he studies the other man’s face, marks the new scar over one dark eyebrow, the glitter of grey like durasteel in the black hair, the wry twist of his lips.

“What, did you like the packaging more than the prize?” Boba mocks, but gently (or as gentle as a barve like him can be), the Mandalorian’s own delay.

“Not a chance,” he replies, allowing his own hands, still gloved, to sink into that mass of thick curls and pull Fett even closer, close enough and hard enough that their armored bodies clash together with the sound of thunder.

“Good,” Fett mutters.

“Good?” the Mandalorian whispers back, feeling that breath he had only imagined moments before.

“So far, so good,” Boba shrugs. “Let’s see what else you’ve got.”

Eager as ever to prove, the Mandalorian’s fingers tighten in the curls. Fett’s pupils dilate, the sudden twinned rush of pain and pleasure hitting his nerves. He lets out a feral growl, shoving the Mandalorian against a wall.

“Show me more,” Fett commands, one of his hands dropping to the Mandalorian’s belt and then, sliding behind, to cup his armor-less rear. He can feel the heat of his palm through the worn, old jumpsuit. “Or I’ll forget to be nice.”

“I’d like to see that.”

A second later, Boba’s hand lands a firm slap on that target. The Mandalorain’s hips buck, smashing him against Boba in a way that is both sensual and brutal. A desperate whine escapes him. The teasing is almost too much at this point but still, he holds out.

Or at least, he does, until Boba starts to remove his thigh plates, running warm fingers along the inner seams of metal, all the way up toward the armor covering his groin.

Then, Fett’s fingers slid under even that armor.

It’s enough to undo him, that heated touch, the way Fett can be so gentle when he wants to be. The way his fingers only coax, not demand, the sighs he’s rewarded with from the Mandalorian. “C’mon, ruus,” Fett whispers. “You know you deserve this.”

“For….for what I said?” he gasps out. “Or for what you did?”

There’s one small moment where something like regret crosses Fett’s face, twisting his strong features into a scowl. “I meant what I said. Do not think I didn’t.”

“You might have said it.” The Mandalorian uses that same foolhardy confidence that got him into this mess in the first place. “But you didn’t act it.”

No, Fett hadn’t followed what he’d said, at all. He’d come to the Mandalorian’s rescue, just in time.

“I was there for the bounty on that Bothan.”

Doubtful. The fee isn’t worth the time of a man like Boba Fett.

Actually, the Mandalorian is pretty sure _he_ wasn’t worth Fett’s time.

But hope pushes him toward speaking once more.

“Admit it, Fett,” he says, using the other man’s name for the first time in ages. “You missed me.”

There is a cold, stony silence, where the hardened bounty hunter’s face reveals nothing. The Mandaloriian’s heart thuds fast as he waits.

Then, as fast and deadly as a nexu, Fett’s hand reaches toward him, pulls him close… and then it’s Fett’s lips on his, Fett’s heartbeat louder than his own, Fett’s body against his. The kiss is warm and passionate and familiar, all the things the Mandaloiran had missed these long two years.

Gruffly, Fett mutters, “like Hell I did.”

* * *

Afterward, their armor lays on the floor in a tangled pile, which they both know they’ll have to sort out soon. But for now, they rest, their own limbs tangled in the sheets of the narrow bed. Neither of them mind the bed, it gives them an excuse to press closer together, to share the comfort of skin touching skin instead of cold armor. Both of them crave the warmth and touch of another, though neither of them has ever said as much--at least, not while the other one can hear.

“What’s next for you?” Fett asks.

The Mandalorian lifts his head from the boney shoulder he’d been using as a pillow. “Dunno. Back to the guild.”

“I’ll buy you out of it.” Fett makes the comment quickly, almost too quickly, as if he’s been thinking of it. Knowing him, maybe he has. He was always the type to mull things over for a long time.

Usually, too long a time.

Because life is short for people like them. Life is short and hard and lacking in moments like this for people like them.

“No.” The Mandaloiran shakes his head. “I make my own way. I don’t need favors from--” from a lover? A friend? What was Fett to him? “From anyone.” He finishes.

Fett shrugs the same shoulder, jarring the Mandalorian a little more awake.

He bites his lip, an old habit from when he was younger, a gangly teenager learning the trade. “And you?”

“Got a big job for Jabba,” Fett says, stretching out his arms, his muscles rippling beneath all the scars and old wounds. Each one is a story that no one, not even the Mandalorian, is allowed to know.

Just because he’s seen Fett without his clothes doesn’t mean he’s ever really been allowed to see Fett completely.

Because there’s more than one type of armor and there’s more than one threat to protect yourself from, in their line of work. Caring about someone else, trusting them for more than a night, that can be just as much a liability as a failing shield generator.

So, he keeps the conversation focused on business, thinking back to what he’s heard others talk about in regards to Jabba’s hiring needs. “The smuggler?”

A single nod is his answer.

“Let me help.” The smuggler already got Greddo, and if rumors were to believed, had holed up with some Rebels, hiding on some star-forsaken base.

“No.”

“But—“

Instantly, Fett’s almost-lazy demeanor shifts back into the guarded posture of a predator. He leaves the bed then, picking up each piece of armor, hiding a bit more of humanity with every item he places back on his body. The man behind the mask vanishes, replaced by the coldness of the T-shaped visor that distorts that caf-warm voice when Fett says, “This one isn’t for you, _ruus.”_

Ruus. Rock. Someone stubborn and foolhardy. Stubborn enough to hope for affection from a man made of durasteel and grit. Someone foolhardy enough to actually pursue that man.

And someone who had gotten very used to never saying goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> Have to admit, I'm intrigued by this ship. Comments welcome!


End file.
